Foundation-Stone Laying Ceremony of Toho Tenax Production Line

The carbon fibre producer Toho Tenax Europe GmbH has laid the foundation stone for a new production line on its Heinsberg-Oberbruch site.

With an investment of about 51 million Euro, the company is creating 59 new direct jobs. Start-up of the new production line is planned for August 2009.

Toho Tenax Europe is a producer of carbon fibre, with 300 workers in two cities in Germany - the division’s development, laboratories and sales are located in Wuppertal, whilst production is situated at Heinsberg-Oberbruch.

Only 1.5 years ago, the third production line at the Oberbruch site came on stream, with the capacity on this site nearly being doubled. Now, building of the next production line #4 with a yearly capacity of 1,700 tons has just started. Line #4, on which an advanced yarn type for aerospace and industrial applications will be produced, is a further development of line #3. “Although our line #1 has been running for 22 years already, the production will be optimized with every new line along with our customers’ requirements”, explained the technical managing director Fred Horst. The new building for line #4 is located in parallel to the existing building of line #3.

“The enormous growth of the worldwide, but also of the European market have encouraged us to this step and we are convinced that the strong development of applications for carbon fibres will continue“, said the president Eckhard Scholten.

NTPT is collaborating with the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne - Swiss Centre of Technology (EPFL) and other partners to research discontinuous fibre composite tubes for high performance applications.